New Plays in Manhattan

The Masque of Kings (by Maxwell Anderson; Theatre Guild, producer). Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria-Hungary, a rakish young man with liberal tendencies, was found dead in the hunting lodge at Mayerling on Jan. 30, 1889. With him, also dead, lay the Baroness Mary Vetsera. He was 31, she 18. The scandal shook the Austro-Hungarian Empire to its foundations. And although Emperor Franz Joseph hushed up every detail of the tragedy so thoroughly that the motivation for the deaths remains mysterious to this day, the Mayerling affair has been pawed at by sensation mongers for two generations. In The Masque of Kings the dead prince and his mistress have for the first time fallen into literary hands capable of giving their story nobler treatment.

Playwright Anderson, who took the historical liberty of sending a girl friend to Washington at Valley Forge, has his own dramatic explanation of Rudolph's and Mary's deaths. He thinks that Franz Joseph infuriated Rudolph by ordering his separation from Mary when Rudolph wanted to leave the corrupt court and marry her. He guesses that Rudolph was approached by Hungarian separatists at this critical time and accepted a proposal that he split off Vienna from Budapest and rule at least one half of the Kingdom decently. When his revolt starts and the guns begin to crack, however, Rudolph realizes that all governments are alike, that rulers must kill to rule and that every state is run by an inner ring for profit. On top of this sudden conversion to political atheism, Rudolph loses faith in Mary and there is nothing left but despair. When the sun comes up there are two corpses in Mayerling, some 35 elsewhere in Vienna and adequate official explanations for everything.

To Oldster Pauline Frederick as Empress Elizabeth and Oldster Dudley Digges as Franz Joseph went full critical praise and a welcome back to the stage from the films. Henry Hull and Margo, the lovers at Mayerling, split honors with Playwright Anderson for an historical episode bursting with strength and bravery, so true that it should have happened even if it did not.

Frederika (words & music by Edward Eliscu & Franz Lehar; Shuberts, producers). "Mr. J. J. Shubert, during his recent tour abroad, had observed the tradition of paying homage to the Waltz King by visiting Lehar at his home in Vienna. He had witnessed performances of five of his recent works in as many different capitals. The rare musical gift Frederika is merely the forerunner of a cycle." So reads a program note in this collaboration between Composer Lehar and the Producers Shubert, which was received by Manhattan first-nighters with self-control bordering on ennui.

Franz Lehar is not only a Hungarian; he is a Rotarian. The best of this gifted sexagenarian's melodies--lyrically proclaim his Magyar background. The Lehar melodic line at its best is marvelously cunning, fresh, deceptive. It climbs like a lark to clear heights, then swoops down and off in a breathtaking, unexpected course.

It is a sublimation of Gypsy passion and Teutonic sentiment. But Herr Lehar is also a businessman who runs a theatre in Vienna and takes seriously his affiliation with Rotary International. The great majority of his best scores were written more than a decade ago and this does not prevent him from selling them over & over along with inferior latter-day creations. That Frederika--a perfunctory, old-fashioned operetta about the life & loves of Goethe which was first produced seven years ago--does not come up to the stratospheric standards of such earlier Lehar work as The Merry Widow (1905), is a loss not only to J. J. Shubert but to those who love Lehar music and are, like Mr. Shubert, anxious for an opportunity to hear more of it.

And Now Good-Bye (by Philip Howard; John Golden, producer). Actor Philip Merivale is unquestionably the longest-suffering man on the U. S. stage. He suffered as the disillusioned Hannibal in The Road to Rome, he grieved as the erring husband in Cynara, he went through agonies as the betrayed Washington in Valley Forge and in Death Takes a Holiday his was the title role. In And Now Good-Bye the handsomely gaunt Englishman is once more presented as a noble and appealing character for whom things are very sad.

Mr. Merivale is now sad because he is a small-town English nonconformist parson who has to live in a ghastly house with a leaking roof, put up with a whining wife, stand for any amount of bulldozing from his parishioners and much bad cooking from a gabbling, ill-trained slattern. He is sadder when one of his younger parishioners runs away. He is a little more cheerful when he goes after her and falls in love with her, but then he is much sadder than ever when she is killed in an off-stage railway wreck from which he escapes. Most reviewers were also made sad by Mr. Merivale's sadness, but there are hundreds of his enthusiastic followers who will be made happy just to see him back on the boards for the first time this sorry theatre season.

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